Pelléas et Mélisande (opera)

Pelléas et Mélisande (Pelléas and Mélisande) is an opera in five acts with music by Claude Debussy. The French libretto was adapted from Maurice Maeterlinck's symbolist play of the same name. It premiered at the Salle Favart in Paris by the Opéra-Comique on 30 April 1902; Jean Périer was Pelléas and Mary Garden was Mélisande, conducted by André Messager, who was instrumental in getting the Opéra-Comique to stage the work. It is the only opera Debussy ever completed.

The plot concerns a love triangle. Prince Golaud finds Mélisande, a mysterious young woman, lost in a forest. He marries her and brings her back to the castle of his grandfather, King Arkel of Allemonde. Here Mélisande becomes increasingly attached to Golaud's younger half-brother Pelléas, arousing Golaud's jealousy. Golaud goes to excessive lengths to find out the truth about Pelléas and Mélisande's relationship, even forcing his own child, Yniold, to spy on the couple. Pelléas decides to leave the castle but arranges to meet Mélisande one last time and the two finally confess their love for one another. Golaud, who has been eavesdropping, rushes out and kills Pelléas. Mélisande dies shortly after, having given birth to a daughter, with Golaud still begging her to tell him "the truth."

Pelléas et Mélisande has remained regularly staged and recorded throughout the 20th and into the 21st century.

Composition history

Debussy's ideal of opera

Looking back in 1902, Debussy explained the protracted genesis of his only finished opera: "For a long time I had been striving to write music for the theatre, but the form in which I wanted it to be was so unusual that after several attempts I had given up on the idea." There were many false starts before Pelléas et Mélisande. In the 1880s the young composer had toyed with several opera projects (Diane au Bois, Axël) before accepting a libretto on the theme of El Cid, entitled Rodrigue et Chimène, from the poet and Wagner aficionado Catulle Mendès.

At this point, Debussy too was a devotee of Wagner's music, but—eager to please his father—he was probably more swayed by Mendès' promise of a performance at the Paris Opéra and the money and reputation this would bring. Mendès' libretto, with its conventional plot, offered rather less encouragement to his creative abilities. In the words of critic Victor Lederer, "Desperate to sink his teeth into a project of substance, the young composer accepted the type of old-fashioned libretto he dreaded, filled with howlers and lusty choruses of soldiers calling for wine." Debussy's letters and conversations with friends reveal his increasing frustration with the Mendès libretto, and the composer's enthusiasm for the Wagnerian aesthetic was also waning. In a letter of January 1892, he wrote, "My life is hardship and misery thanks to this opera. Everything about it is wrong for me." And to Paul Dukas, he confessed that Rodrigue was "totally at odds with all that I dream about, demanding a type of music that is alien to me."

Debussy was already formulating a new conception of opera. In a letter to Ernest Guiraud in 1890 he wrote: "The ideal would be two associated dreams. No time, no place. No big scene [...] Music in opera is far too predominant. Too much singing and the musical settings are too cumbersome [...] My idea is of a short libretto with mobile scenes. No discussion or arguments between the characters whom I see at the mercy of life or destiny." It was only when Debussy discovered the new symbolist plays of Maurice Maeterlinck that he found a form of drama that answered his ideal requirements for a libretto.

Finding the right libretto

thumb|Maurice Maeterlinck

Maeterlinck's plays were tremendously popular with the avant-garde in the Paris of the 1890s. They were anti-naturalistic in content and style, forsaking external drama for a symbolic expression of the inner life of the characters. Debussy had seen a production of Maeterlinck's first play La princesse Maleine and, in 1891, he applied for permission to set it but Maeterlinck had already promised it to Vincent d'Indy.

Debussy's interest shifted to Pelléas et Mélisande, which he had read some time between its publication in May 1892 and its first performance at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens on 17 May 1893, which he attended. Pelléas was a work that fascinated many other musicians of the time: both Gabriel Fauré and Jean Sibelius composed incidental music for the play, and Arnold Schoenberg wrote a tone poem on the theme. Debussy found in it the ideal opera libretto for which he had been searching. In a 1902 article, "Pourquoi j'ai écrit Pelléas" (Why I wrote Pelléas), Debussy explained the appeal of the work: <blockquote>"The drama of Pelléas which, despite its dream-like atmosphere, contains far more humanity than those so-called 'real-life documents', seemed to suit my intentions admirably. In it there is an evocative language whose sensitivity could be extended into music and into the orchestral backcloth."

Carré was keen on a new Scottish singer, Mary Garden, who had captivated the Parisian public when she had taken over the lead role in Gustave Charpentier's Louise shortly after its premiere in 1900. Debussy was reluctant at first but he later recalled how impressed he was when he heard her sing: "That was the gentle voice that I had heard in my inmost being, with its hesitantly tender and captivating charm, such that I had barely dared to hope for."

Maeterlinck claimed that he only learned of Garden's casting when it was announced in the press at the end of December 1901. He was furious and took legal action to prevent the opera from going ahead. When this failed—as it was bound to do, since he had given Debussy his written authorisation to stage the opera as he saw fit in 1895—he told Leblanc that he was going to give Debussy "a few whacks to teach him some manners." He went to Debussy's home, where he threatened the composer. Madame Debussy intervened; the composer calmly remained seated. On 13 April 1902, about two weeks before the premiere, Le Figaro published a letter from Maeterlinck in which he dissociated himself the opera as "a work that is strange and hostile to me [...] I can only wish for its immediate and decided failure." Maeterlinck finally saw the opera in 1920, two years after Debussy's death. He later confessed: "In this affair I was entirely wrong and he was a thousand times right."

Rehearsals

Rehearsals for Pelléas et Mélisande began on 13 January 1902 and lasted for 15 weeks. Debussy was present for most of them. Mélisande was not the only role which caused casting problems: the child (Blondin) who was to play Yniold was not chosen until very later in the day and proved incapable of singing the part competently. Yniold's main scene (act 4 scene 3) was cut and only reinstated in later performances, when the role was given to a woman. In the course of rehearsals it was discovered that the stage machinery of the Opéra-Comique was unable to cope with the scene changes and Debussy had rapidly to compose orchestral interludes to cover them, music which (according to Orledge) "proved the most expansive and obviously Wagnerian in the opera." The premiere received a warmer reception than the dress rehearsal because a group of Debussy aficionados counterbalanced the Opéra-Comique's regular subscribers, who found the work so objectionable. Messager described the reaction: "[It was] certainly not a triumph, but no longer the disaster of two days before...From the second performance onwards, the public remained calm and above all curious to hear this work everyone was talking about...The little group of admirers, Conservatoire pupils and students for the most part, grew day by day..."

Critical reaction was mixed. Some accused the music of being "sickly and practically lifeless" and of sounding "like the noise of a squeaky door or a piece of furniture being moved about, or a child crying in the distance." Camille Saint-Saëns, a relentless opponent of Debussy's music, claimed he had abandoned his customary summer holidays so he could stay in Paris and "say nasty things about Pelléas." But others — especially the younger generation of composers, students and aesthetes — were highly enthusiastic. Debussy's friend Paul Dukas lauded the opera, Romain Rolland described it as "one of the three or four outstanding achievements in French musical history", and Vincent d'Indy wrote an extensive review which compared the work to Wagner and early-17th-century Italian opera. D'Indy found Pelléas moving, too: "The composer has in fact simply felt and expressed the human feelings and human sufferings in human terms, despite the outward appearance the characters present of living in a dream." The opera won a "cult following" among young aesthetes, and the writer Jean Lorrain satirised the Pelléastres who aped the costumes and hairstyles of Mary Garden and the rest of the cast.

Performance history

The initial run lasted for 14 performances, making a profit for the Opéra-Comique. It became a staple part in the repertory of the theatre, reaching its hundredth performance there on 25 January 1913. In 1908, Maggie Teyte took over the role of Mélisande from Mary Garden. She described Debussy's reaction on learning her nationality: "Une autre anglaise—Mon Dieu" (Another Englishwoman—my God). Teyte also wrote about the composer's perfectionist character and his relations with the cast:

<blockquote>As a teacher he was pedantic—that's the only word. Really pedantic ... There was a core of anger and bitterness in him—I often think he was rather like Golaud in Pelléas and yet he wasn't. He was—it's in all his music—a very sensual man. No one seemed to like him. Jean Périer, who played Pelléas to my Mélisande, went white with anger if you mentioned the name of Debussy...</blockquote>

Debussy's perfectionism—plus his dislike of the attendant publicity—was one of the reasons why he rarely attended performances of Pelléas et Mélisande. However, he did supervise the first foreign production of the opera, which appeared at the Théâtre de la Monnaie, Brussels on 9 January 1907. This was followed by foreign premieres in Frankfurt on 19 April of the same year, New York City at the Manhattan Opera House on 19 February 1908, and at La Scala, Milan, with Arturo Toscanini conducting on 2 April 1908. It first appeared in the United Kingdom at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on 21 May 1909. Interest was further revived by the famous production which debuted at the Opéra-Comique on 22 May 1942 under the baton of Roger Désormière with Jacques Jansen and Irène Joachim in the title roles. The couple became "the Pelléas and Mélisande for a whole generation of opera-goers, last appearing together at the Opéra-Comique in 1955."

thumb|upright|[[Edward Johnson (tenor)|Edward Johnson as Pelléas, 1925]]

The Australian premiere was a student production at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in June 1950, conducted by Eugene Goossens, with Renee Goossens (no relation) as Mélisande. The first professional staging in Australia was in June 1977, with the Victorian State Opera under Richard Divall.

In December 1962 (for the Debussy birth centenary) the Opéra-Comique gave several performances conducted by Manuel Rosenthal and directed by Pierre Bertin using the original Jusseaume-Ronsin sets from the 1902 premiere production. Notable later productions include those with set designs by Jean Cocteau (first performed in Metz in 1963), "The new production by the New York City Opera is handsome and sensitive. It has a Barbizon feeling about it, coupled with an air of decadence." Boulez returned to conduct Pelléas in an acclaimed production by the German director Peter Stein for the Welsh National Opera in 1992. Modern productions have frequently re-imagined Maeterlinck's setting, often moving the time period to the present day or other time period; for instance, the 1985 Opéra National de Lyon production set the opera during the Edwardian era. whom critics have called the "finest Pelléas of his generation."

In 1983, Marius Constant compiled a 20-minute "Symphonie" based on the opera.

Roles

{| class="wikitable"

!Role

!Voice type

!Premiere cast, 30 April 1902<br>Conductor: André Messager

|Arkel, King of Allemonde

|bass

|Félix Vieuille

|Geneviève, his daughter, mother of Golaud and Pelléas

|contralto

|Jeanne Gerville-Réache

|Golaud, grandson of Arkel

|baritone or bass-baritone

|Hector-Robert Dufranne

|Pelléas, grandson of Arkel

|baritone (baryton-Martin)

|Jean Périer

|Mélisande

|soprano or high mezzo-soprano

|Mary Garden

|Yniold, the young son of Golaud

|soprano or boy soprano

|C Blondin

|Doctor

|bass

|Viguié

|Shepherd

|baritone

|colspan="3" |Offstage sailors (mixed chorus), serving women and three paupers (mute)

Instrumentation

The score calls for:

Character of the work

An innovative libretto

Rather than engaging a librettist to adapt the original play for him (as was customary), Debussy chose to set the text directly, making only a number of cuts. Maeterlinck's play was in prose rather than verse. Russian composers, notably Mussorgsky (whom Debussy admired), had experimented with setting prose opera libretti in the 1860s, but this was highly unusual in France (or Italy or Germany). Debussy's example influenced many later composers who edited their own libretti from existing prose plays, e.g. Richard Strauss' Salome, Alban Berg's Wozzeck and Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Die Soldaten.

The nature of the libretto Debussy chose to set contributes to the most famous feature of the opera: the almost complete absence of arias or set pieces. There are only two reasonably lengthy passages for soloists: Geneviève's reading of the letter in act 1 and Mélisande's song from the tower in act 3 (which would probably have been set to music in a spoken performance of Maeterlinck's play in any case). Instead, Debussy set the text one note to a syllable in a "continuous, fluid 'cantilena', somewhere between chant and recitative".

Debussy, Wagner and French tradition

reveals Debussy's deeply ambivalent attitude to the works of the German composer Richard Wagner. As Donald Grout writes: "it is customary, and in the main correct, to regard as a monument to French operatic reaction to Wagner". Wagner had revolutionised 19th-century opera by his insistence on making his stage works more dramatic, by his increased use of the orchestra, his abolition of the traditional distinction between aria and recitative in favour of what he termed "endless melody", and by his use of leitmotifs, recurring musical themes associated with characters or ideas. Wagner was a highly controversial figure in France. Despised by the conservative musical establishment, he was a cult figure in "avant-garde" circles, particularly among literary groups such as the Symbolists, who saw parallels between Wagner's concept of the leitmotif and their use of the symbol. The young Debussy joined in this enthusiasm for Wagner's music, making a pilgrimage to the Bayreuth Festival in 1888 to see Parsifal and and returning in 1889 to see . Yet that same year he confessed to his friend Ernest Guiraud his need to escape Wagner's influence.

Debussy was well aware of the dangers of imitating Wagner too closely. Several French composers had tried to write their own Wagnerian music dramas, including Emmanuel Chabrier (Gwendoline) and Ernest Chausson (). Debussy was far from impressed by the results: "We are bound to admit that nothing was ever more dreary than the neo-Wagnerian school in which the French genius had lost its way among the sham Wotans in Hessian boots and the Tristans in velvet jackets." Debussy strove to avoid excessive Wagnerian influence on from the start. The love scene was the first music he composed but he scrapped his early drafts for being too conventional and because "worst of all, the ghost of old Klingsor, alias R.Wagner, kept appearing."

However, Debussy took several features from Wagner, including the use of leitmotifs, though these are "rather the 'idea-leitmotifs' of the more mature Wagner of than the 'character-leitmotifs' of his earlier music-dramas." Debussy referred to what he felt were Wagner's more obvious leitmotifs as a "box of tricks" () and claimed there was "no guiding thread in " as "the characters are not subjected to the slavery of the leitmotif." Yet, as Debussy admitted privately, there are themes associated with each of the three main characters in .

The continuous use of the orchestra is another feature of Wagnerian music drama, yet the way Debussy writes for the orchestra is completely different from , for example. In Grout's words, "In most places the music is no more than an iridescent veil covering the text." The emphasis is on quietness, subtlety and allowing the words of the libretto to be heard. Debussy's use of declamation is un-Wagnerian as he felt Wagnerian melody was unsuited to the French language. Instead, he stays close to the rhythms of natural speech, making part of a tradition which goes back to the French Baroque of Rameau and Lully as well as the experiments of the very founders of opera, Peri and Caccini. The deliberate vagueness of the story is paralleled by the elusiveness of Debussy's music.

Subsequent opera projects

Pelléas was to be Debussy's only completed opera. For this reason it has sometimes been compared to Beethoven's Fidelio. As Hugh Macdonald writes: "Both operas were much-loved only children of doting creators who put so much into their making that there could be no second child to follow after." This was not for want of trying on Debussy's part, and he worked hard to create a successor. Details of several opera projects survive. The most substantial surviving musical sketches are for two works based on short stories by Edgar Allan Poe: Le diable dans le beffroi and La chute de la maison Usher. But, according to Victor Lederer, for "shock value, neither [As You Like It nor Orphée] tops the Tristan project of 1907 [...] According to Léon Vallas, one of Debussy's early biographers, its 'episodic character... would have been related to the tales of chivalry, and diametrically opposed to the Germanic conception of Wagner.' That Debussy entertained, if only for a few weeks, the idea of writing an opera based on the Tristan legend is quite incredible. He knew Wagner's colossal Tristan und Isolde as well as anyone, and his confidence must have been great indeed if he felt up to treating the subject." However, nothing came of any of these schemes, partly because the rectal cancer which afflicted Debussy from 1909 meant that he found it increasingly hard to concentrate on sustained creative work. Pelléas would remain a unique opera. The first recording of extended excerpts from the opera was made by the Grand Orchestre Symphonique du Grammophone under conductor Piero Coppola in 1924 and remade with the electrical process for improved sound in 1927. The 1942 recording conducted by Roger Désormière, the first note-complete version, is considered a reference by most critics.

References

Notes

Sources

Others by and Annette Kreutziger-Herr (in German), and

External links

, a contemporaneous analysis
Full Vocal Score with notes
Synopsis